Filed under – DUH! Of course it’s a right you idiots. You know, I would imagine if the Constitution was required reading in this country people might not have to go all the way to the Supreme Court to figure this out. I mean really, I knew it in elementary school the first time they went over it with me.

The Supreme Court ruled for the first time Monday that the Second Amendment provides all Americans a fundamental right to bear arms, a long-sought victory for gun rights advocates who have chafed at federal, state and local efforts to restrict gun ownership.

The court was considering a restrictive handgun law in Chicago and one of its suburbs that was similar to the District law that it ruled against in 2008. The 5 to 4 decision does not strike any other gun control measures currently in place, but it provides a legal basis for challenges across the country where gun owners think that government has been too restrictive.

“It is clear that the Framers . . . counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote for the conservatives on the court.

Sure, we’ll hire more people and send in the Guard and stuff. And by that he means hire more people but cut back on the total numbers of hours worked, which cancels out the effect of the new people, and say he will send in the Guard without actually doing it. But hey, it’s on paper and he can always say he wanted to but there was some evil plan to prevent him.

The blatant nature of this scam they are running – and I don’t just mean immigration – is truly frightening.

The U.S. Border Patrol has quietly reduced its current force of available agents along the U.S.-Mexico border by cutting the overtime hours they can work even as the Obama administration is asking Congress for hundreds of millions of dollars to hire 1,000 new agents, and Congress and the public are clamoring for beefed-up border security.

Several rank-and-file and senior agents told The Washington Times that a new overtime directive issued at the agency’s Washington headquarters will limit their ability to get their jobs done, reduce coverage during peak smuggling periods and allow more criminals to avoid apprehension.

“By lowering the statutory overtime cap nearly 15 percent through the current administrative restrictions, top-level managers in the Border Patrol are depriving Americans of desperately needed coverage along the border at a time of national crisis,” said T.J. Bonner, a veteran agent who heads the National Border Patrol Council, which represents all 15,000 of the agency’s nonsupervisory agents.

Because of the nature of the job, most Border Patrol agents average at least two hours overtime a day and the agency, as part of its ongoing recruitment effort, has promised what it called an “excellent opportunity for overtime pay.” The overtime cutback comes at a time that violence against the agents, according to Department of Homeland Security records, is up 31 percent this fiscal year.

Our perennial national debate over how to interpret the Constitution will soon be renewed, as the Senate considers the Supreme Court nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan.

In fact, former Justice David Souter set the discussion in motion last month in a Harvard commencement address— arguing that seeking to resolve difficult constitutional questions based on an honest effort to construe that document’s words (whether broadly or narrowly) “has only a tenuous connection to reality” and leads to bad decisions.

Souter’s candor is commendable but also genuinely troubling — the practical equivalent of a retired cardinal announcing that religion is an opiate for the masses. Even judges who quietly believe that the Constitution is an irredeemably reactionary document, which they must pull and push into the 21st century, are not generally so bold, preferring instead to cloak their innovations with references to the Constitution’s text.

Souter, however, argues that the Constitution is too full of ambiguous language and competing imperatives to sustain a textual approach to its interpretation. Like the people it serves — who throughout their history have demanded security and liberty, liberty and equality — the Constitution tries to have it both ways and is too often irreconcilable.

It is, therefore, the courts (and the Supreme Court especially), that Souter believes must “decide which of our approved desires has the better claim,” and this cannot be done simply by reading the Constitution’s words. Put differently, we all must trust in the judges to find our way through the morass, to make the right choices between competing constitutional imperatives, and we cannot accuse them of making up the law when they make choices we do not like. It is their job, not ours.
When judges rule

It would be difficult to articulate a decision-making model more antithetical to American democracy and the Constitution’s own design. It is often said — by the Supreme Court among others — that we have a “government of laws and not of men.” Judges are people, not the living embodiment of the law. When a judge makes the choices Souter suggests, without regard to the Constitution’s words and their original meaning, it is the judges who rule and not the law.

Jon Leibowitz, the chairman of Obama’s Federal Trade Commission, is at the epicenter of a quiet movement to subsidize news organizations, a first step toward government control of the media. In our book, 2010: Take Back America — A Battle Plan, we reported that he had commissioned a study to examine plans for a federal subsidy for news organizations. Among the measures under consideration are special tax treatment, exemption from antitrust laws and changes in copyright laws.

Now Leibowitz has begun to pounce. A May 24 working paper on “reinventing” the media proposes that the government impose fees on websites such as the Drudge Report that link to news websites or that it tax consumer electronics such as iPads, laptops and Kindles. Funds raised by these levies would be redistributed to traditional media outlets.

Hmm. Say what you want about the so-called controversy, I am convinced that this guy is following his conscience and is upholding the letter of the Constitution as best he knows how. I don’t think it is because he disagrees with policy, although he may, but he looks like he just wants things to be the way they should be, Constitutionally. I do wonder, if there is nothing to it, why so many millions have been spent dodging the issue. Hell, I have to present a birth certificate for some things, and they usually will only take the original. Why won’t Obama just put the original out there and get it over with? I suspect for two reasons. One, he is so arrogant he believes he should not have to be bothered with such. Secondly, his birth certificate may contain some inconvenient truths (like different mother or father name that put the lie to his official story). The remote third possibility is that he really wasn’t born here. We won’t know that for sure until he releases the stupid thing. Easy fix, if he would just do it. Then we could get on with real business.

Whatever the intent (and I am suspicious), the devil is in the details. Even if this is perfectly legit now, it inevitably will not be in the future. This is an abuse waiting to happen. That’s the problem with people today. “But it seems like such a good idea!” It ALWAYS seems like a good idea. But try and think long term, shall we?

The online Encyclopedia of Mental Disorders says “behavior modification,” a controversial psychological treatment, can be accomplished through positive reinforcement or “punishment” – and now President Obama has signed an executive order specifying the treatment for all Americans, to be prescribed by government bureaucrats.

Obama’s order appoints members to a new government committee set up by the Democrats’ new health law that will evaluate, make recommendations about and establish rules for everything from how people exercise to whether they smoke to the food they eat and the medicines they use. And it specifically requires the committee list the priorities for “lifestyle behavior modification” that the government will pursue.

The encyclopedia report describes “punishment” as “the application of an aversive or unpleasant stimulus in reaction to a particular behavior.” Two experts who reviewed the president’s June 10 executive order establishing the National Prevention, Health Promotion, and Public Health Council say the plan easily could encompass exactly that.

Herb Titus, a veteran constitutional expert and lawyer, told WND, “The council is designed to basically implement future policy that ultimately everything will be governed by federal authorities, from food to dietary supplements to vitamins.”

[…]

The council’s membership, including the chiefs of the Agriculture, Labor, Health and Human Services, Transportation, Education and Homeland Security departments as well as the heads of the Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Trade Commission, National Drug Control Police, Domestic Policy Council, Corporation for National and Community Service and others, also is alarming, Titus noted.

Most of those positions have no qualifications for making decisions about health care, so what would be their involvement, wondered Titus.

Could it be that non-compliance will bring down the wrath of those agencies?

[…]

The council then will have to report to the president on what it has done, what progress has been made and provide a “list of national priorities on health promotion and disease prevention to address lifestyle behavior modification (including smoking cessation, proper nutrition, appropriate exercise, mental health, behavioral health, substance-use disorder, and domestic violence screenings) and the prevention measures.”

That paragraph alone raised eyebrows for those wondering what the government would do to demand “lifestyle behavior modification.” It also raised concerns over its reference to “domestic violence screenings” as well as “mental health.”

The order also targets most of the products that are promoted as natural supplements or remedies, demanding that all “prevention programs” be based on the “science” guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control, virtually eliminating anything that is not put through the multi-million dollar tests required of the federal agency.

Asked a blogger at Techimo.com, “Is this something we need to worry about? Is (sic) Obama and his ‘advisers’ attempting to modify our behavior through legislation?”

The increase in sales continued well beyond November 2008. From November 2008 to October 2009, almost 2.5 million more people bought guns in the 12 months after the election than in the preceding 12 months. The National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, doesn’t tell us how many guns each person bought just the number of people who bought them. Most likely though, gun sales rose by more than the number of people who purchased them.

At the same time gun sales were soaring, there was an unusually large drop in murder rates. The 7.4 percent drop in the murder rate was the largest drop in murder rates since the 1999. For those who don’t remember, 1999, when President Bill Clinton and Columbine occurred, was another time when gun sales soared. With people such as Elena Kagan serving as Mr. Clinton’s deputy domestic policy adviser were pushing hard for more gun control, Americans were worried that more gun bans were coming. And in response gun sales soared.

Just as higher arrest and conviction rates, longer prison sentences, or the more frequent use of the death penalty reduce crime, so does letting victims defend themselves with guns. More certain or greater penalties make it more risky for criminals to commit crime. Victims who can defend themselves can also make committing crime more dangerous and deter criminals.

Americans living in the District of Columbia and Chicago have seen this phenomenon themselves. After the ban went into effect in both cities, murder rates rose dramatically. After the Supreme Court threw out DC’s ban and gunlock laws in 2008, the District’s murder rates plunged by 25 percent in 2009. Indeed, my research in the just released third edition of More Guns, Less Crime shows that every place in the world that we have crime data for has seen murder rates climb when guns were banned.

That’s what they’re doing. And that’s all they are doing. I have read the actual curriculum online and there is nothing at all wrong with it. Is it bad to dedicate a week to studying the Constitution and Declaration? Is it bad to learn that there were more presidents in the 20th century than JFK? Is it bad to learn that prohibition of a state sponsored religion doesn’t mean that government must treat religion (actually in practice only Christianity) as some disease that must be prevented? Is it bad to mention that the founders went to church? That they prayed? That they themselves said that our form of government would work only as long as society was a virtuous and religious one? Is it wrong to de-emphasize the tribalism and group politics promoted by the left and emphasize the unity that is the United States of America?

We are indeed moving right. The only reason it looks so radical is that the leftward march has become the new normal. Any progress back to sanity is viewed as outrageous and radical.

This is making news because the libs want it to. They want to make it a big deal because they want to make their own liberal national standards. They want the federal government to control what out children learn and what they think. If anyone wants to protest a dangerous idea, protest that one.

The Texas State Board of Education today approved controversial new standards for its social studies curriculum that could affect what students across the country study in their classes.
Texas State board of education will vote on changes to history curriculum.

The 15-member board dominated by conservative Republicans rejected calls for a delay and voted 9-5 to establish new standards for textbooks and teaching history, economics and other civics classes that will take effect in August 2011.

The new standards call for a greater focus on the Biblical and Christian traditions of the founding fathers. It also calls for the teaching of free market principles, how government taxation and regulation can serve as restrictions to private enterprise, and emphasizes the achievements of Republican leaders , including former President Ronald Reagan and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

The new curriculum also states that the system of the U.S. government be called a “Constitutional Republic” rather than a “Democratic society.” Additionally, it inserts a “Celebrate Freedom Week” during which Texas students will study the importance of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.

“It’s imperative that our children be taught the original direction of our country,” board member and former chair Don McLeroy, who was voted out of office earlier this year, told ABC News. “And I think you tie that in with the concept of American exceptionalism that we’ve added to the standards. I think that it’s important to understand why America is such a wonderful place.”

McLeroy wrote in an op-ed in USA Today last month that the standards “challenge the powerful ideology of the left,” whose “principles are diametrically opposed to our founding principles.” But the self-described “Christian fundamentalist” argues that the board, which appointed a panel of experts last year to make recommendations, has not overreached on the ideological front.

I guess that’s their argument. The problem here is that this sh!t has gone on for so long that it is almost accepted that the government has the right to do whatever they want to anyone, and regulate anything that moves. Clinton once famously remarked in an overseas trip (proudly, I’m sad to say) that the United States taxed or regulated anything that moved and most things that didn’t.

The federal government is arguing in a gun-rights case pending in federal court in Montana that state plans to exempt in-state guns from various federal requirements themselves make the laws void, because the growing movement certainly would impact “interstate commerce.”

The government continues to argue to the court that the Commerce Clause in the U.S. Constitution should be the guiding rule for the coming decision. The argument plays down the significance of both the Second Amendment right to bear arms and the 10th Amendment provision that reserves to states all prerogatives not specifically granted the federal government in the Constitution.

WND has reported both on the lawsuit filed by Montana interests seeking affirmation of the 2009 Montana Firearms Freedom Act as well as the growing movement that has seen six other states, Wyoming, South Dakota, Idaho, Utah, Tennessee and Arizona, follow with similar laws.

The movement worries the federal government. In a brief filed this week in support of government demands that the case be dismissed, posted on the website for the Firearms Freedom Act, attorneys wrote, “Because an illicit market for firearms exists nationwide, a ‘gaping hole’ in federal firearm regulation would persist if firearms made and sold in Montana were exempted from compliance.”

See, this is the issue with Citizens United. It’s not that the law was prohibiting large corporations from spending billions to get their candidate elected, it’s that the law could be interpreted broadly enough to cover any type of political speech by anyone, from blogs, to books, to pamphlets and fliers. It was a dangerous law. And contrary to popular belief, the law is still intact for large corporations, and they still have a lot of the restrictions that they did before. It’s political spin that the libs say the corporations are going to take over the political system now. Actually, one could argue that they own it already anyway, and also contrary to popular belief, I suspect the larger the corporation the happier they are to cooperate with liberals. Think on it.

In the first case she argued before the Supreme Court as solicitor general, Elena Kagan, President Obama’s pick to join the court, argued that the federal government has the power to ban books it deems to be “political electioneering.”

The stance begs the question how Kagan would respond toward legal challenges levied against political exposés like “The Obama Nation” or “The Manchurian President.”

And even though Kagan testified the federal government has not used that power in 60 years of the relevant law being on the books and wouldn’t be likely to use it, she did affirm that political pamphlets could run afoul of the law as examples of “classic electioneering.”

David N. Bossie is president of Citizens United, the organization that brought the case in which Kagan argued, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, to the Supreme Court:

“In Elena Kagan, President Obama has found a nominee whose views on the First Amendment are at worst disqualifying and at least should be questioned rigorously,” Bossie said in a statement. “Kagan argued that a statute that, by her own admission, banned books was not ‘overbroad,’ and that pamphlets produced with corporate funds could be censored.”

He continued, “Authors and pamphleteers from Thomas Paine to Hamilton, Madison, and Jay writing as Publius were critical to the founding of this country. The founders, Madison in particular, recognized the danger inherent in allowing the government to regulate what could or could not be said about it and wrote the First Amendment to guard against exactly the kind of government censorship that Solicitor General Kagan advocated for in Citizens United.”

Republican leadership in Congress has also picked up on the story, as Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Kagan’s testimony was “very troubling.”

“This whole area of her view of the First Amendment and political speech is something that ought to be explored by the Judiciary Committee and by the full Senate,” McConnell said.

Kagan argued Citizens United v. FEC before the court in the wake of her deputy, Malcolm L. Stewart, who created an uproar after Justice Roberts had asked him if the government could ban a 500-page book that at the end said, “And so vote for x.”

Stewart answered, “We could prohibit the publication of that book.”

According to the official transcript of testimony, Justice Ginsburg raised the question again when Kagan appeared before the court.

“May I ask you one question that was highlighted in the prior argument,” Justice Ginsburg asked, “and that was if Congress could say no TV and radio ads, could it also say no newspaper ads, no campaign biographies? Last time the answer was, yes, Congress could, but it didn’t. Is that is that still the government’s answer?”

Kagan then modified her deputy’s answer, arguing that while a section of federal election law referred to as 441b does, “on its face,” apply to “other media,” such as full-length books, the FEC “has never applied 441b in that context. So for 60 years a book has never been at issue.”

Section 441b specifically prohibits corporations and labor unions from paying out of their general budgets for mass communications – like TV and radio commercials – that endorse candidates for federal office. The practice is seen as “electioneering” when done within 30 days of voting.

And while many organizations create separate political action committees to get around the “general budget” restriction of 441b, Citizens United had created a DVD made available for view-on-demand, which it argued did not constitute a “mass communication” according to federal law.

In the course of arguments before the court, however, the question arose as to whether books could be considered “mass communication.”

Justices Scalia and Roberts were not satisfied with Kagan’s answer and immediately sought clarification – Scalia suggesting interpreting the law so broadly as to include books might necessitate striking the law as unconstitutional, Roberts wondering whether even pamphlets would fall under Kagan’s definition of “other media” regulated by 441b.

“I think a pamphlet would be different,” Kagan answered. “A pamphlet is pretty classic electioneering, so there is no attempt to say that 441b only applies to video and not to print.”

Upon her answer, Justice Scalia jumped into the argument as well, saying that based on Kagan’s logic he had “no idea where the government would draw the line with respect to the medium that could be prohibited.”

Kagan then softened her answer, reiterating an earlier suggestion that an FEC prohibition of a book would likely lose a legal challenge and adding, “What we’re saying is that there has never been an enforcement action for books. Nobody has ever suggested – nobody in Congress, nobody in the administrative apparatus – has ever suggested that books pose any kind of corruption problem.”

Scalia, however, was still not appeased.

“So you are a lawyer advising somebody who is about to come out with a book and you say, ‘Don’t worry, the FEC has never tried to send somebody to prison for this,'” he postulated. “‘This statute covers it, but don’t worry, the FEC has never done it.’ Is that going to comfort your client? I don’t think so.”

The discussion resolved when Justice Roberts brought back his original question of whether or not a book produced by a corporation or union that ended with “vote for Jones” could be banned.

“I think that that wouldn’t be covered, Mr. Chief Justice,” Kagan responded. “The FEC is very careful and says this in all its regulations to view matters as a whole. And as a whole that book would not count as express advocacy.”

Could an entire book be considered “express advocacy” and face an FEC ban?

Kagan’s only answer came in an earlier statement: “One cannot imagine very many books that would.”

NEW YORK – A George Soros-funded, Marxist-founded organization calling itself Free Press has published a study advocating the development of a “world class” government-run media system in the U.S.

A newly released book, meanwhile, documents Free Press has close ties to top Obama administration officials.

“The need has never been greater for a world-class public media system in America,” begins a 48-page document, “New Public Media: A Plan for Action,” by the far-left Free Press organization.

“Commercial media’s economic tailspin has pushed public media to the center of the debate over the future of journalism and the media, presenting the greatest opportunity yet to reinvigorate and re-envision the modern U.S. public media system,” argued the Free Press document, which was reviewed by WND.

The hot new best-seller, “The Manchurian President,” by Aaron Klein reveals the inside story on Team Obama and its members. Now available autographed at WND’s Superstore!

The Free Press study urges the creation of a trust fund – largely supported by new fees and taxes on advertising and the private media – to jump start the founding of a massive government-run public media system that will ultimately become self-sufficient.

“We believe local news reporting should become one of public media’s top priorities,” said Free Press Managing Director Craig Aaron, one of the paper’s co-authors.

“We should redeploy and redouble our resources to keep a watchful eye on the powerful and to reliably examine the vital issues that most Americans can’t follow closely on their own,” Aaron stated.

Free Press is a well-known advocate of government intervention in the Internet.

Avowed Marxist

A new book, “The Manchurian President,” documents the founder of the Free Press, Robert W. McChesney, is an avowed Marxist who has recommended capitalism be dismantled.

The book, subtitled “Barack Obama’s ties to communists, socialists and other anti-American extremists,” also documents the close ties between Free Press and leading Obama administration officials. The new work was written by WND senior reporter Aaron Klein and co-author Brenda J. Elliott.

McChesney is a professor at the University of Illinois and former editor of the Marxist journal Monthly Review.

You know, I always thought Glenn Beck was kind of cheesy, but I liked him. And despite what people say, I respect a man who loves his country enough to actually shed tears on its behalf. And he does. I believe that. But I still took him with a grain of salt. No more though.

The things we have seen in this administration and the people that populate it are frightening. I’m not talking about monitoring the phones of citizens speaking to suspected terrorists on the other end of the line (why you would speak to terrorists and why you think you have an expectation of privacy calling a foreign nation anyway is beyond me), or the fact that Cheney used to work for Haliburton (I note that they got a freakin’ HUGE no-bid contract under Obama – where’s the outrage? Could it be they are just the best company for the job?) and therefore any contract they got meant he was somehow in cahoots to take over the world and get rich. I am talking about people that despise the foundation of our country. People that think we are the problem in the world. People that think they and their ilk know better than you and me how to live our lives and want to make sure we do it their way. I’m talking about dangerous people. And the People with a capital P better wake up and take notice before it’s too late..

See, it’s not the intent, folks. I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt and say that these fools think they are doing a good think. But as with all government regulations, the consequences go far beyond some extra safety inspections. This law as written would allow the FDA to totally control the food and drink supply of the United States of America. See this case as an example. Do you prefer raw milk? Is that your choice? Well the FDA says your choice is hogwash. They say they are the sole authority as far as what is suitable to eat and drink. Don’t find that scary? Then you aren’t thinking.

The Iowa case alleges the federal restrictions on raw milk are a violation of the U.S. Constitution, according to a report at Natural News.

The federal attorneys want the case dismissed.

“The interest claimed by plaintiffs could be framed more narrowly as a right to ‘provide themselves and their families with the foods of their own choice,'” the government document states. But the attorneys say that right doesn’t exist.

“The FDA essentially believes that nobody has the right to choose what to eat or drink,” said the Natural News site, which explains it covers topics that allow individuals to make positive changes in their health, environmental sensitivity and consumer choices.

“You are only ‘allowed’ to eat or drink what the FDA gives you permission to. There is no inherent right or God-given right to consume any foods from nature without the FDA’s consent.”

The Natural News report continued, “The state, in other words, may override your food decisions and deny you free access to the foods and beverages you wish to consume. And the state may do this for completely unscientific reasons – even just political reasons – all at their whim.”

The report cited an increasing level of frustration on the part of the federal government because of tactics including buying “cow shares” in which a consumer drinks milk from a cow he partly owns, or “buying clubs.”

“This arrangement drives the FDA absolutely batty because it bypasses their authority and allows free people to engage in the free sales of raw dairy products produced on small family farms,” Natural News said.

This is a must read! I urge you to go here and look now. If I though I wouldn’t run afoul of copyright laws I’d repost in it’s entirety. This is an awesome piece.

Cast your mind back to January 2009, when Barack Obama became the president of the United States amid much rejoicing. The hosannas—covering the inauguration was “the honor of our lifetimes,” said MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews—by then seemed unsurprising. Over the course of a long campaign, hyperbolic rhetoric had become commonplace, so much so that online wags had started calling Obama “the One”—a reference to the spate of recent science-fiction movies, especially The Matrix, that used that term to designate a messiah.

It all seems so long ago now, as one contemplates President Obama’s plummeting approval ratings and a suddenly resurgent Republican Party. Yet it’s worth looking closely and seriously at the election-year enthusiasm of media elites and other Obamaphiles, much of which was indeed, as the wags recognized, quasi-religious. The surprising fact is that the American Left, for all its claims to being “reality-based” and secular, is often animated by the passions, motivations, and imagery that one normally associates with religion. The better we understand this religious impulse, the better we will understand liberal America’s likely trajectory in the years to come.

Yeh, they look like a bunch of radicals to me. Maybe they should have thrown bottles, charged the riot police, and shouted obscenities. Maybe hang someone in effigy, or burn a flag. That works for the left, and it works for illegal immigrants, right? They do that – destroy things, break things, cover the area with garbage, and when the police confront them the news coverage is all about the little guy getting shafted by the right. Sure, these guys are resentful of being pushed back, and well they should be. They are American citizens peacefully – PEACEFULLY – exercising their rights, and they keep getting pushed back, and back, and back, so that they don’t offend the visiting royalty or their court that has come to pay homage. It really is ridiculous…

Oops! The Quincy Police Department released a bogus statement calling the SWAT Team on the the protesting grandmothers yesterday. Unfortunately, they forgot about the army of videographers that filmed this incident.

All appear to believe that state law enforcement officials have no right to recognize and apprehend those suspected of federal crimes. They decry the idea that state legislatures may pass laws that subject suspects to arrest and turn them over to federal authorities. Let’s ignore the fact that, as a general rule, this would wreak havoc in other areas of concurrent state and federal jurisdiction (with respect to criminal acts like murder, bank robbery or extortion, for example). Do they mean to say that the forces of local law enforcement should henceforth do nothing to interfere with people who have violated federal laws? Or is it only federal immigration laws that they wish them to disregard? Do they want state legislatures to remove from the books any state statutes that make criminals liable to prosecution at the state level for acts also made criminal by federal law? This will come as a great relief to people growing marijuana and/or making and distributing other forms of intoxicants as part of the deadly international drug trade.

Common sense rebels against this idiocy, which is why the framers of the U.S. Constitution allowed for areas of concurrent jurisdiction by the states and the federal government. Where the federal government is actively seeking to enforce federal law in such matters, it makes sense to recognize the primacy of its jurisdiction. But it is evident insanity to insist that, when federal officials unlawfully refuse to investigate, apprehend and prosecute criminal acts that directly damage the people of a state, this unlawful dereliction is constitutionally enjoined upon the state’s government. It has been rightly suggested that the U.S. Constitution is not a suicide pact (Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, 1963). Though in any given instance it may establish the U.S. government’s claim to primacy when exercising its constitutionally delegated powers, this in no way vitiates the duty of the state governments to exercise the powers reserved to them. They can and must protect their citizens from direct harm when the U.S. government unlawfully refuses to do so.

About as likely as Keith Olbermann saying something nice about Sarah Palin, right?

Well, on Wednesday, MSNBC.com actually published a piece [1] with the following shocking headline:

Shhh. Wait. It got better (h/t CNSNews [2] via Weasel Zippers [3]):

Americans overall are far less likely to be killed with a firearm than they were when it was much more difficult to obtain a concealed-weapons permit, according to statistics collected by the federal Centers for Disease Control. [4] But researchers have not been able to establish a cause-and-effect relationship.

In the 1980s and ’90s, as the concealed-carry movement gained steam, Americans were killed by others with guns at the rate of about 5.66 per 100,000 population. In this decade, the rate has fallen to just over 4.07 per 100,000, a 28 percent drop. The decline follows a fivefold increase in the number of “shall-issue” and unrestricted concealed-carry states from 1986 to 2006.

The highest gun homicide rate is in Washington, D.C., which has had the nation’s strictest gun-control laws for years and bans concealed carry: 20.50 deaths per 100,000 population, five times the general rate. The lowest rate, 1.12, is in Utah, which has such a liberal concealed weapons policy that most American adults can get a permit to carry a gun in Utah without even visiting the state.

The decline in gun homicides also comes as U.S. firearm sales are skyrocketing, according to federal background checks that are required for most gun sales. After holding stable at 8.5 to 9 million checks from 1999 to 2005, the FBI reported a surge to 10 million in 2006, 11 million in 2007, nearly 13 million in 2008 and more than 14 million last year, a 55 percent increase in just four years.

It must be noted that all of these vital statistics appeared on the third and final page of this article where likely few readers would see them.

Regardless, the data were supported by charts specifically showing how gun-related deaths have declined as the number of states opting for “shall issue” permits increased:

CNSNews’s Joe Schoffstall elaborated [5]:

In this decade, the gun-homicide rate has fallen to 4.07 per 100,000, which equates to a 28 percent reduction in homicides with the use of firearms. This decline in homicides follows a five-fold increase in a “shall-issue” (requirement of a permit to carry a concealed handgun, but where the granting of the permit is subject only to meeting certain criteria laid out in the law) and unrestricted concealed-carry laws in states from 1986 to 2006, reported MSNBC.com.

According to federal background checks conducted on the sale of most firearms, the decline in homicides comes as U.S. firearm sales are skyrocketing. […]

The nation’s highest gun homicide rates are in Washington, D.C., with 20.50 deaths per 100,000 people, five times the general rate. Yet the District of Columbia has the strictest gun-control laws in the nation. The lowest rate of gun-related homicides is in Utah: 1.12 deaths per 100,000 people. Utah’s gun-control policy [6] is very unrestricted.